Oeuvre rule: this is the first book I have read by Woody Allen (he has several, and the only one I ever browsed was called Without Feathers and, as it appeared to consist of rather spurious comedic bits, I passed) but I am very well familiar with his work. Of his nearly 50 films, it is easier for me to list those I have never seen: Zelig (which features a cameo by a recent subject of ours), Alice, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Hollywood Ending, Scoop, Cassandra's Dream, To Rome with Love, Magic in the Moonlight, Cafe Society, and Wonder Wheel. Obviously I have not seen Rifkin's Festival.
So I have seen about 40 of his films. And though he writes, "How would I sum up my life? Lucky. Many stupid mistakes bailed out by luck. My biggest regret? Only that I've been given millions to make movies, total artistic control, and I never made a great film." (392) Query whether he is being too hard on himself, yet I may agree. Annie Hall, Interiors, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Another Woman, Husbands and Wives, Deconstructing Harry, Match Point, Blue Jasmine, and Irrational Man flirt with greatness, and then revert to simply being very good, once they veer in the direction of self-seriousness. Allen seems to chafe at the idea of anyone taking him seriously.
For all of those "nearly great" films, there are more that are "very good": Sleeper (arguably belongs on the previous list), The Purple Rose of Cairo (ditto), Bullets over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite, Sweet and Lowdown, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and Midnight in Paris.
And for all the "merely average" ones, many might disagree, as they do something different, they experiment, and sometimes are great for stretches: Bananas, Love and Death, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex...., Stardust Memories, September, Shadows and Fog, Everyone Says I Love You, Small Time Crooks, Anything Else and Whatever Works (middling films that I still found entertaining), and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (better than expected).
I recently saw A Rainy Day in New York and there were a couple good scenes but I wouldn't recommend it on the whole. It made me sad that my fellow ex-Gallatin-ite, Timothee Chalamet, regretted working with Allen and donated his entire salary to RAINN.
Yet the media often runs stories that merely scratch the surface, and in Apropos of Nothing, basically, Woody Allen fights back. It made me feel much better about Chalamet to read this:
"All the three leads in Rainy Day were excellent and a pleasure to work with. Timothee afterward publicly stated he regretted working with me and was giving the money to charity, but he swore to my sister he needed to do that as he was up for an Oscar for Call Me By Your Name, and he and his agent felt he had a better chance of winning if he denounced me, so he did. Anyhow, I didn't regret working with him and I'm not giving any of my money back." (385)
So maybe that is sort of a spineless move, but image is everything in the industry, and the charged #metoo atmosphere around the Oscars in 2018 felt uncomfortable for everyone in the room. I don't deride Chalamet for this, and it merely shows that there are public and private versions of celebrities, that many publicized stories are calculated poses, and that there might be a chance he could be guarding other aspects of personality that tend to hurt box office, and that perchance we might one day cross paths, and....I kid. This is 2021. Elliot Page also denounced Allen and regretted working with him; Page's bravery in coming out as trans cannot be denied, and openness as to sexuality is not a negative PR move in this day and age.
But, how is the book? Good. It's far from perfect, and Allen does not care about making it perfect. It's extremely casual. There are a number of throwaway lines that less prestigious writers would be forced to remove or edit. It's 392 pages, which is fair for 84 years of life and 50 in the business of filmmaking, and there are no chapters. It reads as one long screed--or rather, about halfway through, it turns into a screed.
The first half, then, rather bored me much of the time. Allen is very nostalgic for his youth and lingers on early career developments a bit longer--in terms of more minute attention--than his later travails in the film industry. He was precocious. He wrote jokes for professionals while still in high school, and earned more than both his parents, while only working part-time after school. Allen repeatedly acknowledges that he is not an intellectual, nor even very intelligent, but he can pretend well enough to be seen as such. He briefly attended NYU, and his budding career continued to limit his interest in further education. At 16, he bought himself an Olympia Portable typewriter, and has typed everything he has ever written on it since. He met Harlene, a first girlfriend, and they decided to get married. After a few years, they grew apart and realized they had made a mistake. Harlene was a philosophy major at Hunter College:
"Because of her, I have become familiar with some Kant, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Hegel, and while I can't really say I knew my en soi from my pour soi, I was able to grasp that 'being in a bad marriage' and 'Being in a bad marriage' was not too dissimilar no matter what Heidegger would say." (108)
He met his second wife, Louise Lasser, on a double date with another couple. Shortly thereafter, one day when his wife was at school, he asked if she wanted to go shopping for a jazz record, then another date at the Belmont racetrack, then another date at the MOMA. It was an overlapping relationship and it lasted for eight years (Allen does not detail the technicalities of divorce from his first wife) until they were finally married.
While none of Allen's films were strictly autobiographical, it was interesting to note some personal details from his life that are sprinkled throughout them. For one, Diane Keaton's original name was Diane Hall. Of course, Diane Keaton is Annie Hall, but others also inspired that character:
"I also played Mister Kelly's in Chicago where I met Judy Henske, during a period Louise and I were on a hiatus from one another. I dated Henske and found her to be bright, funny, and charming. She was from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, which I later made Annie Hall's hometown. Judy towered over me and we made a silly-looking couple but it was a treat to spend time with her. The problem was that at that time, no woman I dated had a chance to develop anything serious with me because I loved the mishugana whom I couldn't seem to straighten out, nor could I grasp the seriousness of her illness. What the hell did I know from manic depressives? My uncle Paul saved tinfoil. He peeled it from cigarette packs and rolled it into a larger and larger ball. That was as crazy as I knew." (121)
Grammy Hall is also what Keaton called her grandmother in real life, and the movie. In Rainy Day in New York, Liev Schrieber plays a film director who pays reference to his first wife, who had been a college student in philosophy when they married. Allen has referred to Radio Days as his most autobiographical film, and it is fair to say that all of his films include autobiographical details, or at least references towards personal history.
So now then, Allen reaches the point in his story where he meets Farrow, and while there are fond remembrances and compliments paid towards her, it quickly devolves into an extended harangue on The Accusation. This book is just under 400 pages and I haven't performed a pinpoint accounting, but I would estimate at least 1/4 (if not 1/3) of the text is devoted to The Accusation, and details surrounding it that may have played into it.
There is a more serious problem with reading this book, and it is the judgment that others may pass on one for reading it. I am never embarrassed to tell people what I am reading, when they ask, but for this I had to supply some sort of explanation. Comparing it to Mein Kampf is both apt and insane. In the popular public imagination, The Accusation is the truth, overwhelmingly. After all, he did marry Soon-Yi, and she is like 40 years younger than him. Say what you will about the impropriety of that marriage, but it would be great to ask anyone that is absolutely positive that he is a pedophile and a child molester if they had heard his side of the story. They might say, no, because I'm sure it's just full of lies.
This happened recently after the airing of Allen v. Farrow. This is a four-part documentary series currently airing on HBO, which also makes this one of the most timely reviews on Flying Houses. After the first episode, Allen and Soon-Yi made a statement that the documentary was completely one-sided, and that the filmmakers provided little or no opportunity to respond to the allegations within it. This statement was trending on Twitter, and to read the threads is to see 99% of the world 100% convinced that he sexually assaulted his daughter.
Yet even those in the pro-Mia camp who watch this very one-sided documentary should call it into question. I would not be surprised if the end result is a lessening of the scorn that has been directed towards him. In the 2nd episode, for example, the filmmakers felt it relevant to spend five minutes on a scholar detailing the "unnatural" obsession Allen had with including parts for 16-18-year-old girls in his scrapped screenplays. This is because his archives are at Princeton University, and speaking as a writer (if I may be allowed), it is an extraordinary thing to delve into unpublished work and use random ideas as evidence of predatory obsessions. This is why Kafka wanted all of his work burned. Fortunately, Franz has kept up a good reputation after nearly a hundred years gone.
Woody Allen does not really care about his reputation, so he says. But he does have regrets:
"I regret that I had to devote so much space to the false accusation against me, but the whole situation was grist for the writers' mill and added a fascinating element of drama to a life otherwise pretty routine. To a guy whose high point of the day is his walk on the Upper East Side, a lurid tabloid scandal certainly gets the adrenaline going. I agree with what Francine du Plessix Gray wrote when she interviewed me years ago: 'There are no great Woody Allen stories.'" (389)
Really, there are not that many (I did find it cute that Emma Stone taught him how to text, and that they became texting buddies, until she ghosted him over, allegedly, an unappetizing recipe for soft-boiled eggs---also his stories of meeting Cary Grant and Tennessee Williams were notable). This book is really just an account. It's an Autobiography; it's not a Memoir. Is there a difference that anyone has distinguished? Memoirs are things an author wants to write; autobiographies are things that other people want them to write. That is my distinction. I don't think Woody Allen wanted to write this book, but felt that it had to be done, just as he had to write an op-ed in the New York Times in 2014, reiterating his innocence of a crime against his own child. People will believe what they want to believe, he says, but one must defend themselves, to a degree.
On this score, perhaps we should consider this alongside another autobiography. That one, also, was no classic. That author, also, is totally canceled. That book, too, is overloaded on the back end with legal troubles (child custody for Allen; unpaid royalties to other Smiths for Morrissey; and frankly, it is hilarious that both are still extremely bitter towards the judges in their cases). The difference is, Morrissey got canceled after that book. People still wanted to read it when it came out. It was hotly anticipated, and it was lovingly packaged as an instant classic. It is not a great book (any of the other memoirs referenced in the first paragraph of that review are better than it, as well as this). But it wasn't embarrassing to be seen reading, it was still cool to like him in mid-2016. That is not the case at all here. There is nothing less hip in 2020.
But is it not fascinating to read that Allen was supposed to have a big part in that yet-unseen Louis C.K. movie?:
"A crazy question: Is there any humor to be falsely accused of a crime? A sex crime, yet? There was a funny sidebar, and that was the flap with Louis C.K. Louis is a very nice man whom I worked briefly with on Blue Jasmine. I always wanted to do a screen comedy, both of us acting together. With the right script I thought we'd be funny playing off each other. He agreed. We both wracked our brains to come up with an idea. I spent a lot of time to no satisfactory avail. He tried as well, but nothing emerged as the one to work on. Now a few years pass, and he contacts me saying he has a script he wrote and wants me in it; has a great part for me. So I read it and I'm appalled. Not that it was a bad story--it was a good one--but I'd be playing an iconic film director who once either molested a child or was accused of it, and the director has a too close relationship with his daughter." (382)
I question the usefulness of making this review any longer, but perhaps I could try to excerpt the most damaging statements. It's not easy to find excerpts in this book, arranged as it is. Allen has very few supporters and while I would not necessarily count myself amongst them, I do find it rather surprising that certain details tend to be oddly ignored in the discussion of the case. Without quoting, there's the odd story of Ronan having cosmetic surgery to extend his legs and make him taller, after he graduated law school at a too-young age; another time Mia slapped Moses (who is dead to everyone in the family as the only supporter of Allen) for supposedly taking a tape measure into his bedroom and forced him to apologize to her in front of his siblings, after having him rehearse the apology; there's the unsettling tape that Mia took of Dylan, naked, describing the abuse; the daughter, Tam, who overdosed on sleeping pills in 2000 after a fight with her mother, framed as "accidental" and "heart failure;" Mia neglecting to attend her son Thaddeus's high school graduation, making him wear iron leg braces in public appearances for publicity that she adopted the disabled, locking him in a shed overnight, and appearing shocked when he committed suicide in a car ten minutes from her home in CT, though he had attempted it six or seven years prior--"It is no wonder that two adopted children would be suicides. A third would contemplate it, and one lovely daughter who struggled with being HIV-positive into her thirties was left by Mia to die alone in a hospital on Christmas morning." (234)
There's more but I think that's the most damning of all. This was not a happy family. I cannot say that she sounds like a good mother (though I am sure those still alive say otherwise). I hope that the documentary includes some of these details, to see how Farrow responds to them. It includes excerpts from the audio version of this book, which Allen reads himself. (Apparently this was used without permission but that is hardly its most irresponsible moment.) It would be a seriously dramatic moment to put her on the spot.
The fact is, she was and still is an excellent actress, and she has had a traumatic history. She married Sinatra at a very young age. Her performance in Rosemary's Baby rightly remains iconic. She was elevated into another echelon by Polanski, before Charles Manson killed his wife. She would later defend him, then decry him (on another note: the "funny story" about Soon-Yi believing that a certain person they have dinner with is Polanski, when he is not, is one of the odder moments in the book). She had a son who later a wrote Pulitzer-Prize winning flagship book for the #metoo movement, burnishing their reputation for uncovering abuse. Her own immediate family supplied even further trauma, which also included famous parents, suicide and molestation. Little or none of this is her fault, yet that reality complicates this narrative a bit more.
I do not fault her for feeling betrayed and disgusted by Allen, and of course no one can say with total certainty whether or not The Accusation is true or false (except them--you absolutely cannot fault Dylan, whom Allen also claims saw a psychiatrist, prior to the Accusation, for a tendency to confuse fantasy with reality) and really the whole thing makes me want to throw up.
So I err on the side of judging art on its own, rather than framing it as the work of a monster and obliterating whatever value people had seen in it previously. I don't believe that's totally happened with Allen--many detractors still acknowledge Annie Hall as a fine film--but the overarching idea is that these sorts of people should not be allowed to be successful artists. For one they are old white men (I am conflating Allen and Polanski, which isn't really fair as Polanski acknowledges his guilt) that still enjoyed late career success (Midnight in Paris and The Pianist) and still had financial backers that allowed them to keep making films. They're beyond boomers (what do you call them--the silent generation?) in their late 80's, and they're beyond redemption. That said, I still want to see J'Accuse (and Rifkin's Festival, but to a lesser degree). And I also hope that this documentary will, unintentionally, help make it that Allen does not die remembered only as a pedophile, but as the prolific and legendary comedian, writer, director and artist (I include nothing about jazz in this review, but there is plenty in the book) that he has been for 60 years. But he does not seem to care:
"...You relish the close looks and investigations rather than fear them, because you have nothing to hide. You're eager to take the lie detector test rather than ducking it. It's like sitting at a poker game and holding a royal flush. You can't wait till all the bets are in and the hands are shown. But what if I never get a chance to play my cards? What if I'm gone before I scoop up the chips? Well, as someone who's never had any interest in a legacy, what can I say? I'm eighty-four; my life is almost half over. At my age, I'm playing with house money. Not believing in a hereafter, I really can't see any practical difference if people remember me as a film director or a pedophile or at all. All that I ask is my ashes be scattered close to a pharmacy." (381-382)
And so perhaps neither should we bother ourselves worrying about it.
Grade: B+
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